Progress Update Early June 2016

I’ve been a little quieter than I planned recently, but there is a good reason… or, in fact, several good reasons. The first is, of course, Wanderer Book Five which has now reached 165,000 words. That means it is officially twice as long as Wanderer’s Escape, so that has kept me busy the times when I could write on my laptop.

Then, of course, there is the dictating. I’ve been busy there as well. In fact, in the space of about two weeks I have dictated what I think is going to be my first novella. The story is something like 30,000 words, give or take a few thousand, which is pretty good going even if it was all a working on… but seeing as it is being written as I have also been writing Wanderer Book Five that is amazing. The very rough word count is because I still have a few of the recordings to run through the speech to text tool, and the 1st draft takes a lot more editing because there is often background noise which throws the editing software, as does my accent at times.

In fact, the the dictation has gone so well that I splashed out on a much better microphone. Well, to be honest, almost any microphone was going to be better than the one that came with a relatively cheap set of earphones. This one set me back about £50, but is proving to be a great investment already. It has a windshield, very important when walking the dogs, and it generally picks up my voice much more clearly. It’s not eliminating mistakes, but I don’t seem to be getting the big gaps of a sentence or two that are totally lost.

The third thing that’s been occupying me is pretty big news… my new short story collection is finally with my proofreader. That means that I’m able to start working out the production schedule, roping in the beta readers and setting a release date. Two major items remain to be sorted, the book title and the book cover, though I think we’ve probably settled on the title now (watch this space).

Fairly soon I’ll be looking for a number of advanced readers, who will get the book two to three days before it is released in return for an honest book review ideally around the time it’s out. I have a few people who have done that before, but would certainly appreciate some more advanced readers. If you would like to get the book a few days early, and for free, please get in touch via Facebook or using the contact form here on the website.